Givens on rebuilding mission in Athens

SOCCER: In a city  where the most precious monuments are the ruins left by foreigners who came bent on destruction, Don Givens hopes this evening to initiate a process of reconstruction within the Republic of Ireland's battered national team set-up, writes Emmet Malone in Athens

The strength of the squad he has brought to Athens this week obviously says something about the status of this evening's game at the city's Panathinaikos stadium. But Givens has insisted all week that a win could spark a revival in Ireland's fading European Championships fortunes and that several of the players he is entrusting with the task of achieving it are being presented with the sort of opportunity that rarely comes along when all is well and a team is winning.

John O'Shea is the most obvious candidate for elevation on a long-term basis to the senior team, although such is his rate of progress at Old Trafford that it may actually be a little academic just how well the 21-year-old manages to perform tonight.

Others with chances to impress any prospective Ireland managers amongst the satellite television audience include Stephen McPhail, who will earn his seventh international cap on the left side of midfield and Lee Carsley, who returns to its heart despite having been reinvented somewhat by David Moyes at Everton as a right-sided player with a taste for getting forward.

Richard Dunne returns, though at left back, while Colin Healy retains the starting place McCarthy handed him for the defeat in Dublin by the Swiss last month.

Dunne's introduction to the left side of the defence is a surprise, though Ian Harte's absence always meant that somebody was going to have to acquaint themselves with the position.

Givens said last night that he had considered O'Shea and Gary Breen for the job but had settled on Dunne after seeing his performances against West Brom and Manchester United recently. "I called him into the squad as a reward for all the hard work he has done," said the man who as under-21 manager has been severely critical of several other players over their lack of self-discipline.

"In the games I saw him play in he looked to be in terrific condition and I went for him ahead of Gary for this job on the basis that he has more experience of playing at full back - albeit at right back".

Dunne's rehabilitation at City is far from complete, but there again seems to be optimism at Maine Road that the young Dubliner has finally learned his lesson and in his current form the idea that he might establish himself as some sort of option at left back is far from out of the question.

The opportunity would appear to be knocking more loudly for Carsley, however.

The 28-year-old is currently playing what is probably the best football of his career in a team that Moyes has transformed from relegation battlers into a side with its ambitions fixed firmly on a place in the top six and European football next season.

After two games in which Mark Kinsella and Matt Holland have been overrun through the centre of midfield, and with Roy Keane apparently no closer to returning, there is certainly an opportunity for Carsley to make an impression and stake a claim for the future.

David Connolly, of course, will be hoping to play down any reference he might receive from Givens and the striker yesterday continued to insist that he had been misrepresented by the manager's account of their conversation on Saturday night. Givens disagrees but insisted last night that he would not dwell any longer on the Wimbledon player's absence from the Irish panel this week.

Glen Crowe, of course, is the main beneficiary of the fallout between the pair and nobody in this evening's team has more of an opportunity to win over the critics than the Eircom League's leading scorer. Those who view the domestic game with scepticism will expect little enough from the Bohemians striker, but the manager of the Greeks this evening, Germany's Otto Rehhagel, has reason to be wary of him.

When Rehhagel was in charge at Kaiserslautern, Crowe scored in both legs of the Bundesliga outfit's UEFA Cup encounter with the Dublin club a couple of seasons back. The Germans were already going poorly at home and the closeness of the result against the Irish side hastened his departure.

These days he is again under pressure after the Greek team's poor start to their European Championship campaign and though there has been some improvement since Spain and Ukraine both beat his team 2-0 - the Greeks beat Armenia by the same score last time out - he is far from out of the woods. Like Givens he is without a number of regulars for this evening's game and is likely to rely heavily on players from host club Panathinaikos.

Most are well seasoned at this level, though, and all will be well aware that, not for the first time in the history of these parts, the fate of their foreign leader may be at stake tonight.

GREECE (Probable): Nikopolidis (Panathinaikos); Fyssas (Panathinaikos), Dabizas (Newcastle United), Kyrgiakos (Panathinaikos), Seitaridis (Panathiaikos); Giannakopoulos (Olympiakos), Tsartas (AEK), Zagorakis (AEK), Karagounis (Panthinaikos); Haristeas (Werder Bremmen), Nikolaidis (AEK).

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND: Given (Newcastle); Finnan (Fulham), Cunningham (Birmingham City), O'Shea (Manchester United), Dunne (Manchester City); Healy (Celtic), Carsley (Everton), Holland (Ipswich), McPhail (Leeds United); Crowe (Bohemians), Doherty (Tottenham Hotspur).